Canned Goods

Context: the celebration (put emphasis on the word celebration. really emphasize it) of new computer lab. My role: presenting my use of the lab (unexpected role: defender of new media in a composition course). Occurrence: A couple responses, at the end of my prez, to the Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us video and what I’m doing this semester:

Q1: How do you document the students sources in a video like this? It’s a mash of sources. Isn’t this the problem with all this technology?
A1: Ah, the image in the video says Wikipedia, and the next says YouTube . . .
A2: I understand concerns over plagiarism in writing classes, but there are many cases of scholars and professional writers plagiarizing, even if it’s unintentional. Here, the appropriations are intentional and not disguised.
A3: And I’ve found that when I’m writing with a source next to me, I begin to take on that voice. Aren’t all research papers, essentially, a mashup in print form? Tracking what’s plagiarism and what isn’t in print is messy.
A4: Sure, in a writing classroom students should understand issues such as plagiarism, copyright, and appropriation. By actually having students perform these actions with digital media might be a way reaching that understanding in ways that handouts warning students of the ramifications of plagiarism might not.

Q2 ( I don’t think I understood it really): this video was so fast. everything on the web seems fast. Sitting down to write on a piece of paper takes time to do. (seem to be a conflation: the end product is fast? so the process is too?).
A: Students have to consider the affordances of a particular medium, and they spend an incredible amount of time composing in the media we use.

Q3: Not all students have access to the technology you’re using. How do you respond to that?
A1: Well, maybe that’s a good reason to incorporate the technology into the classroom; this computer lab gives everyone in the course an opportunity to work with technology; a student who doesn’t outside the class gets it here.
A2: And those students who are privileged enough to have it already begin to understand the issue of access when it’s discussed in class (costs of software, hardware, high-speed internet connections, to start).
A3: Students not only gain some technical proficiencies but, ideally, they also gain an understanding about privilege, civic engagement, collective intelligence, and personal expression in these new media landscapes.

I definitely didn’t have the best responses prepared, simply because I wasn’t expecting an after-conference paper delivery q&a. So I learned: “Don’t leave home without [them]” (Karl Malden, American Express slogan).